Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2018

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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26 April/May 2018 unmanned systems
inside
SPECIAL REPORT NASA TECHNOLOGY
on what drone is flying where. Industry
will be providing services such as UAS
Service Suppliers, services that drone
operators will use on a subscription ba-
sis to do f light planning and deconf lic-
tion. NASA is developing a prototype
of what industry will be doing that
it will transfer to participating com-
panies in the form of specifications
and APIs (application programming
interfaces) for the USS system. APIs
are the connective software necessary
for different elements of the UTM to
communicate.
Alphabet (the parent company of
Google) and Amazon are among the
f irms already working on becom-
ing USS providers. There also will be
commercially run supplemental data
service providers, or SDSPs, that will
supply information to support USS
operators.
"Weather is an example of supple-
mental data service that could be a
third party or a commercial f irm,"
Johnson said. The weather firm or
UTM Opportunities
Firms will be needed to supply:
• Flight planning and deconfl iction
• Weather data
• Terrain mapping
• Radar surveillance
s
n
a
p
s
h
o
t
when the pilot no longer has control or
the drone has been co-opted.
Stopping the f light doesn't necessar-
ily mean the drone is lost. It could be
equipped with a parachute for a rela-
tively soft landing—but the f light will
be stopped.
"So with Safeguard, what we're es-
sentially saying is you're not going to
ever cross your boundaries," Dill said.
UTM OPPORTUNITIES
Safeguard-equipped drones are al-
ready being used to assess vehicle-
to-vehicle communications as part
of the testing of NASA's UAS Traffic
Management (UTM), one of the most
ambitious drone-related programs un-
derway at NASA.
Building on its decades-long rela-
tionship with the Federal Aviation
Administration (FA A), NASA is de-
veloping an air traffic management
system capable of handling what is ex-
pected to be an extraordinary volume
of drone f lights.
"There are projections for how many
drones or UAS—unmanned aircraft
systems—are projected to be f lown
commercially in just the next few years.
It's on the order of millions," UTM
Project Manager Ronald Johnson said.
"And so the paradigm of having a hu-
man air traffic controller in communi-
cation with an aircraft for separation
and such, it's just not going to work in
terms of trying to scale up for the pro-
jected commercialization of drones.
And the FAA realizes that. NASA rec-
ognized that a while back. So the idea is
that the UTM system is software based
on the traffic management side of it and
there's enough automation in it so that
there's a minimal amount of human
involvement in actually reviewing and
approving operations."
A s cur rently env isioned U T M
will be a federated system. The FA A
will produce and manage the Flight
Information Management System,
which sets the overall airspace con-
straints and can provide information
NASA's UAS Traffi c
Management System
(UTM) will be implemented
by private fi rms. Other fi rms
will supply UTM data.
Photos courtesy of NASA.